To ask how long your baby should sleep with you?

[penelopepig]

Posting here for traffic really, bit confused.

I'm getting so much conflicting advice on how long a newborn should sleep in your room for and wondered what everyone's thoughts are and why?

I seem to be getting 6 months as a guideline from a lot of people but if you have a partner getting ready in the mornings etc in the same room- how in the hell are you supposed to establish any semblance of a routine?

mRex

How did you get him
To settle in bed without you?

The 6 months is to do with SIDS. If the baby can hear others in the room they don't sleep as deeply and one of the cause of SIDS is thought to be a very deep sleep that the baby doesn't come out of if they can't breathe etc. I believe the risk of SIDS is greatest at around 3 - 4 months and then falls and is negligible after 6 months. Hence the 6 months cut off for medical reasons. However lots of people sleep in the same room as their baby for longer for behavioural reasons such as the baby wakes up a lot or won't sleep without parents. And the sleeping in the same room is just one if the risk factors that affects SIDS, others are bottle feeding, smoking, second hand mattress, sleeping arrangements etc. So if all the other factors are low and it's not working out sleeping in the same room (lack of space, baby and parents waking each other up etc) then parents can take a calculated small risk and move them into a different room earlier than 6 months if they want (they might find they are so tired for example drom the baby snoring that they are worried about a car accident when driving due to tiredness and think the risk of injury is greater than the risk of SIDS). There is as far as I know no medical reason to keep baby in the same room as parents longer than 6 months - it's just a parenting preference like any other

@crispysausagerolls - we get him ready for bed, I feed him and sing nursery rhymes then go quiet. When he's done feeding I did my bra up and rub his back vigorously / head gently. Then move away once he's asleep. When he's teething / poorly / somewhere new he'll wake up a few times and need resettling, otherwise he sleeps until he wants a late night boob. He lets DH sette him if he isn't hungry.

*do not did

Actually, after his main feed I missed out the half hour he spends standing up and down, running along the edge of the bed these days and bringing every teddy into bed from the side of his little den then putting them back, followed by a 5 minute boob and implausibly falling into deep sleep. And he sometimes "sings" me a "song" now too.

@AmIRightOrAMeringue Bottle feeding is categorically not a SIDS risk factor. Breastfeeding lowers the risk, marginally, but bottle feeding does not increase it.

MRex

Damn that sounds excellent - tried to feed DS to sleep in our bed last night and leave him there for a bit and it did not work 🤦🏻‍♀️

@motheroftinydragons

But if breastfed babies have a lower risk than bottle fed, surely that means bottle fed have a higher risk than breastfed?

@ReaganSomerset. Say the risk is at five (for example) Breastfeeding might lower it to four, but bottle feeding doesn't increase it to six. It just stays at five.

Make sense?

I had our son for a year sleeping in bed with me. It was against HV advice but it worked a treat.
I can't really recall many broken nights. I did breast feed for 9 months.
Then he was moved to his room. I think he was ready.
He never came back to our bed not even for one night. He is 13 now.

I had our son for a year sleeping in bed with me. It was against HV advice but it worked a treat.
I can't really recall many broken nights. I did breast feed for 9 months.
Then he was moved to his room. I think he was ready.
He never came back to our bed not even for one night. He is 13 now.
My DH went to the spare room.

What I never understood with the 6 month thing is whether or not you are allowed to nip out to get a glass of water or use the toilet.

DH went to her own room at 5 months. She was formula fed. She is fine. We all sleep great.

She was sleeping through the night at this stage though.

I had DD in my bed until she recently turned 3. She won't stay out of my bed at night and it's disturbing my much needed sleep. If you can, don't go over 1 year with baby in your bed/room.

I have a 7 month old in with me. Last child I got into their own room a few months before she arrived. He was 7 years old at the time. I don't live with partner and I figure we all get lonely at night. Some nights I've had 7 year old and 10 year old as well as DD in cot!

7 1/2 months 6 months corrected. He was beginning to wake every time we rolled over so that’s why. My oh is very noisy in morning so for ages he was putting things in another room for the am. DC is now 1 and still ends up in our bed at 5am.

We kicked out DS at 13 weeks a) because he was too big for his crib b) because he was like a little animal noisy bugger - we were disturbing him and he was disturbing us. He slept through the night the day we got him out of our room and has done every night ever since.

Mine (3 and 5) fall asleep with an adult. Are put together asleep in their own double bed at about 8pm. Most nights one or both will wake wanting a grown up but usually resolved and back asleep in ten mins. I did everything wrong in terms of creating a rod for my own back ". I can't imagine I'll regret a second of it on my death bed though.

This thread displays the massive difference between individual families. I think it's really interesting. One person's comfort zone is another's nightmare.

Co-slept with both of my babies (still co-sleeping with DS2 who is 32 months!) and I don't regret a minute of it.

DS1 is 6 and sleeps brilliantly, but he needed me to stay with him at bedtime for years.

info on the Lullaby trust is really helpful, I'd kind of always been told it was just a parenting style choice, not a safety thing. Good to have the facts

Your baby Sleeping in the same room as you reduces the risk of sids BY HALF

The guidelines are same room for ALL daytime and night time sleeps for the first 6 months.

There are some weird attitudes on this thread, though.

We evolved to stay close to our babies at all times, for obvious reasons. I held mine during the day and night as much as possible.

The whole 'baby in own room' thing is a very recent development in human history. I don't get it at all. I'm not a 'huggy/touchy' person but I had a visceral need to keep my babies next to me.

I don't necessarily think it's weird. If you have a monitor and can keep an eye on baby, it can be nice to get some space and sleep. I was delighted when DD moved to her own room.

@crispysausagerolls - on extremely clingy nights he's either implausibly still hungry or we find the VERY vigorous back rubs (300 or 400) do the trick, then just back off slowly. We had safety barriers on our bed that were reassuring from rolling at about 10 weeks to "can I use this barrier to stand up" at 8 months, when we put another mattress on the floor by the bed for sharing on the basis that he can't get too hurt if he falls off the floor. I'm sleeping with him tonight though because he had a fever. I like how @MutantDisco put it, I have a visceral need to keep him physically close, from his head to his feet he's touching me so I'll wake up if his temperature spikes.

Ours were in their own room from the day we got home from hospital. Best move we ever made. We were well rested and the children were well looked after in their own space.